Unbeknown to most, on Iwo Jima after the bloodiest battle in Marine Corps history, there was another battle raging for the very soul of our fledgling democracy in America. It was a no holds barred, take no prisoners kind of struggle between highly unusual island combatants, the 17 chaplains who served the 5^th Marine Corps Division on Iwo. The conflict was over a planned interdenominational service. Both the 3^rd and 4^th Divisions had managed to bury their dead in their perspective cemeteries days before without confrontation but for the 5^th Division there was one unreconcilable difference, a Jewish rabbi was asked to write and deliver the eulogy to be spoken over predominately Christian dead. That was the primary reason stated as to why all the Catholic and many of the Protestant chaplains revolted against the Division Chaplain.

The threat came in the form of an ultimatum. If the Division Chaplain would not cancel his planned service, the dissenting chaplains themselves would not participate and would encourage their followers to do the same. They didn’t carry out that initial threat, instead, they showed up at the cemetery the next day with their faithful followers but only for the purpose of directly intimidating their perceived nemesis, Rabbi Roland B. Gittelsohn. The rabbi had been driven out to the cemetery expecting to deliver the eulogy he had prepared for the entire division when his personal hell broke out all at once. There had been some clamoring about a Jew praying over non-Jewish graves, but a confrontation was about to begin. Many of his fellow chaplains weren’t gathered there to support him, but to deny him. They acted as a barrier and as the rabbi made his way through them, he was told to his face that should he attempt to speak the eulogy he had painstakingly prepared, they would dismiss their Christian faithful on the spot. It was an unimaginable image the rabbi could not be the cause of, and he relented to their demands.

Suddenly, new plans for the ceremony had to be immediately negotiated. The Division Chaplain, Commander Warren Cuthriell, resisted and was willing to continue but Gittelsohn feared for his friend’s future should he stand his ground. It was not just the chaplains he was dealing with, but they had gone over his head and had gotten the Catholic Church involved. Alternate plans were then adopted to appease all the Catholic and many of the Protestant chaplains. They would conduct a general religious service followed by the commanding general’s tribute and then withdraw to different corners of the cemetery to conduct separate Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish services. It was a nightmare scenario the rabbi could never have foreseen.

It was a dagger to his rather enlarged heart, but after the general’s tribute to his men the gathering of survivors were simply dismissed. For many, there delayed stress at least partially released as they walked amongst the cemetery graves looking for names upon the many white crosses and stars, row after row like a mini–Arlington Cemetery. They searched to recognize their buried friends and comrades. Some Christians crying over Jewish Stars of David. Others just weeping at the site of so many graves. It was devastation becoming reality. The rabbi wrote “It was impossible to forget the brotherhood and love of men like these.”

Sammy Bernstein, who was a marine riflemen assigned to the rabbi for protection while the rabbi worked in the cemetery, was told to muster as many Jews as he could and direct them to the corner of the cemetery that was assigned them to conduct the Jewish service. They were scattered all about in the chaos, but Sammy assembled as many as he could. According to Sammy, only 25 attended the service where the rabbi spoke the same eulogy he had prepared for the division without making any changes to meet the moment. Attending were three Protestant chaplains that skipped their own service in protest of the cancelled plans. There, no speakers carried his words and there was no means to record the moment except for grainy film and useless attempts to record the speech. The moment could well have been lost in history as prejudicial chaplains appear to have intended.

Even those that attended had difficulty hearing the words. The site was windswept, and the clamor of war was about them. One witness to his words was a marine combat correspondent that wrote a book including the cemetery events. While he later obtained a complete mimeographed copy of the eulogy before departing the island, he wrote only excerpts because that was how he heard the words. The rabbi’s words were heard by him in the same way he wrote them in his book, in and out of focus at any given moment. His attention being lost to his personal and unavoidable thoughts.

After the service, one of the attending Protestant chaplains asked to borrow the rabbi’s original handwritten speech from which he had spoken. Stating how difficult it was to hear his eulogy the chaplain wanted to read and understand the power of the rabbi’s words. Unknown to Gittelsohn, he took the original handwritten eulogy to command headquarters on the island and had some 2,000 mimeographed transcripts made. They were distributed to that chaplain’s regiment, all without Gittelsohn’s knowledge at the time.  Somehow, Gittelsohn’s original eulogy manuscript written longhand on multiple sheets of onion-skin paper was lost.  Perhaps it was lost in the process of making the many mimeograph stencils required in producing some 2,000 copies, maybe it got innocently damaged or destroyed or simply lost among the thousands of copies and there was no longer a practical way to locate it, who knows. What we know is that the Protestant chaplain who borrowed it never returned it.  No explanation was ever offered, it simply vanished into history and has never been accounted for. Rabbi Gittelsohn departed the island with not even a draft copy to reconstruct what had been taken from him. His true words, documenting that important moment, thought to be lost forever. Chaplain Gittelsohn left the island with nothing but his memory of what had occurred. It was all beyond his comprehension, and it left him in pain wondering what had just happened.

Sadly, as a direct effect of the revolt, not even the Christians were together that day as they too separated to conduct their own services with Catholics here and Protestants there in different corners of the unexpectedly large cross shaped cemetery. For the dedication for the 3^rd and 4^th Divisions cemeteries there was no separate Christian services, but not for the 5^th Division dedication. One could surmise that there existed a serious rift even between the Christian denominations because Division Chaplain Cuthriell conducted the Protestant service while the Catholics conducted their own. It was not what the rabbi had envisioned when he searched his heart for the words to explain why they had paid such a high price for victory. 

The carnage had been real, and the rabbi was stretched beyond his limits. More than 2,200 dead, 38 came in bags, only from the 5^th Division. The rabbi was painfully aware of this having spent a great deal of his time in the cemetery. Bodies piled up before him. The torn flesh of our young men on full display as their blood fertilized the volcanic sand upon which they had bled out. The battle had been expected to last but a few days on this tiny Pacific Island, but it had now been 28 days of literal hell on earth. It was extraordinarily brutal combat and humanity teetered on extinction. In total, 71,000 Marines fought on this very small Pacific Island against 22,000 Japanese defending the encroachment upon their homeland. The battle so fierce and the defenders so determined that only 216 Japanese were captured alive.

Because he was the only rabbi on the entire island, Chaplain Gittelsohn was kept exhaustingly busy. They had planned for 700 deaths per marine division and so they planned for a cemetery up to 900 bodies. By the time he left the island, after thirty-five days of combat, 2,280 American sons and husbands had been buried in the 5^th Division cemetery, and several hundred were still missing-in-action.

While still on the island, the rabbi had his duties to perform, and young men’s souls that required his attention, his own emotional guard still steadfast. Until he departed the island that is. Everyone was different, but their delayed stress was real. For the chaplain, it happened aboard ship in the wardroom just an hour or two after boarding as he sat alone. For him, it was a steaming bowl of soup served by the black waiter, the white ironed tablecloth and clean shiny metal utensils that pushed their way into his mind’s cracks. Finally, it was his time and place to succumb, to release pent-up realities. He had seen enough blood to “float a yacht”, and finally he broke down. Huddled in the corner, he cried uncontrollably, possibly wishing he was in his wife’s warm and consoling arms once again.

Some could never shake off their nightmares, but he managed to over a short time. The chaplain’s nightmares came from the sight of bare feet. Just the sight of bare feet out from under a blanket, or even the benign sight of bare feet in sandals triggered his recollection of corpses covered except for their feet, row upon row of young feet we can imagine with toe tags to identify the person. Even earthly odors and perspiration reminded him of decaying flesh. Mercifully, his triggers faded with time.

It was the beginning of a life sentence of cruel and unusual punishment knowingly or unknowingly handed down to the chaplain by the Marine Corps. He was in a Catch-22 situation. He did not deliver the dedication before the entire 5^th Division, but the public was told he did. As a chaplain communicating with families of the fallen, the family members often thanked the rabbi for such an amazing eulogy spoken over their loved one now left buried on that island. How could he tell them that he hadn’t?

It was out of Gittelsohn’s control. The church, prejudicial chaplains and like-minded supporters held all the power. He was but one man, a Jewish man in 1945 braking barriers and absorbing the pain of being different. Not only had he been prevented from addressing the survivors and praying the eulogy over the dead, but his words were also ripped away from him. After departing the island, he was investigated for being a communist and without evidence he was drummed out of the service. That is how the first Jewish chaplain was treated in the Marine Corps in 1945. The problem, should he push back against the bigoted establishment, was that the focus would then be on him and not those that had fought and died. He was on the side of those that gave their all, his fellow marines. It was a life sentence he honorably took to his grave in 1995, his soul intact.

In an article published in The Reconstructionist entitled “Brothers All?” Gittelsohn wrote, “I do not remember anything in my life that made me so painfully heartsick. We had just come through nearly five weeks of miserable hell. Some of us had tried to serve men of all faiths and of no faith, without making denomination or affiliation a prerequisite for help. Protestant, Catholic, and Jews had lived together, fought together, died together, and now lay buried together. But we the living could not unite to pray together! My chief consolation at the moment was that another Jew besides myself would have been unacceptable as dedicator of the cemetery – even though these very men professed to teach in his name!”

Few people know that his eulogy was intentionally altered with added words, misplaced punctuation, combined paragraphs and more in an attempt to sabotage his work. Still, his Iwo Jima eulogy became famous to the dismay of the prejudiced chaplains. Someone even inserted a complete sentence stating that all the faiths were together that day, perhaps thinking nobody would ever know the difference. Today, after the only known handwritten copy of the eulogy was discovered in 2022, we know what they did and why.